Roger

Almost 2 weeks ago (on May 19th), we bought a turtle!

We went to the grocery store in Xiaolan, about a 20 minute bus ride away from Guzhen, and looked them all over before picking the one we wanted. He was the runt of the group (did you know a group of turtles is called a bale?), but he also seemed to be the most active. We got the attention of one of the employees, who then went and got the person who was in charge of the turtles and fish, and we pointed to the one we wanted. He picked him up, put him in his hand, then covered him with his other hand and shook him! He laughed while we all stared at him with a "What are you doing? Don't shake our turtle!" look on our faces. We picked out a little container for him and the man put the price sticker for the turtle on his new home. (He only cost 8 yuan! That's like $1.25!) We also got him turtle food, and rocks for his home. We carefully transported him back to Guzhen, where we named him Roger....or "Rog" as we called him.

He was a grump too...but we blamed the man who shook him...and Olivia-for kicking him across the room (on accident). We changed his home to a bigger bucket that he seemed to like more, and kept him outside on our porch in the fresh air. We showed him to our friends who would come over to our apartment...Mary, Apple, our student Benny boy, as well as a boy down our hall who is also named Benny. Benny from down the hall asked us if we were going to eat him, which we quickly shook our heads to. We enjoyed having Roger...even though we were convinced he was trying to die because he didn't seem to ever eat. And then...on Sunday morning, he disappeared. Gone. Vanished. Benny from down the hall had been over for a second in the morning, and we can't be sure...but we're convinced he let Roger out, or took him, or something...cuz there's no possible way for Roger to have gotten out on his own. He was cute. We miss him. (We also have no idea if "he" was actually a "he"...but Roger seemed to fit...)

Also...the sky was pretty the day we bought him.

Beijing! (April 28-May 6)

 

So last week, we had our week-long vacation to Beijing! 4 of us left on Saturday right after teaching in the morning. The other 3 girls were flying to Beijing...they didn’t want to take the 21 hour train ride with us and our standing tickets. Yah...by the time we bought our tickets the sleeper beds had sold out...as well as the seats...so standing it was! We were not excited about it at all...but we didn’t have the money to fly! We tried sitting down in seats as soon as we got on the train...just picked some random seats and sat down...and that worked for about 2 minutes, then people started telling us that we were in their seats. After everyone had boarded and we realized how many people there were and how crowded it was, we all went a little crazy. We tried figuring out how we were gonna sleep...we contemplated sleeping on top of the luggage racks, and planking on the top of the seats. We made friends with the people who’s seats we had tried to steal though, and they shared all of their food with us (the good stuff, as well as the bad...I had no idea papaya tasted like puke!) One of them actually got off after an hour, so Katey slid into that seat before any of the other people standing could, so then we had the one seat that we would rotate every hour, taking turns sitting in it. We would also sit down whenever someone went to go to the bathroom, or went to have a smoke, or sometimes they would just stand up to stretch their legs. There were also plastic buckets that the train had for people to sit on, they ran out of them before we could get any for ourselves, but sometimes one of our new friends would let us sit on theirs. It was a long train ride for sure. We all slept (or tried to) on the floor that night. At about 9am a bunch of people got off, including our new friends Johnny, Bruce, and Bruce’s wife, so then we all got seats. I was finally able to sleep then, usually only for about 20 minutes at a time, but it was sleep that I needed.

 We got to Beijing at about 3pm on Sunday afternoon. We had directions to the hostel...so we tried following them... They said to take the metro, so we got onto the metro and realized that the station at the Beijing West train station doesn`t connect to any other line yet because it`s still under construction... So we headed back to the train station, and while standing around, wondering which way was north so that we could walk to another metro station, a guard walked up to us and asked if we needed any help. I pointed to the metro stop we wanted to go to on a map and he told us to follow him. At first he walked us to some taxis, and they were telling us how much it would cost, but we were like, no, we want to walk...it's free! So then the guard started walking us to the station...asking like 8 people along the way for directions, and at one point we were following him, and he was following some old guy, but we did get to the right metro stop, and got to our hostel safe and sound. The four of us just kinda walked around near our hostel that day, we went to a little shop that I would go to almost every night that I was in Beijing last year and introduced these girls to my friend Zo there and got a couple shirts from him.

On Monday we all went shopping!!! We went to the silk market, then to the pearl market. We were only at the pearl market for a few minutes before it closed, but were able to make some friends and make the short time worthwhile. On Tuesday we went to the Temple of Heaven in the morning. We danced with some old people there, and watched a bunch of people stretch and exercise. They were pretty crazy though...folding themselves in half and swinging around upside down, even though they were like 60 years old! We headed over to the pearl market after that and shopped some more.

On Wednesday we headed to the Great Wall of China!!! We went to the Mutianyu section, which is actually the same section of the wall I went to last year, but we walked in a different direction, so it was all new still. A day or two before we went the girls had seen some of the ``I climbed the Great Wall` shirts and had said something about not really climbing, and I had told them then that it was indeed a climb, and they saw what I meant when we went, because there are parts where the stairs are gigantic and go so steeply up the mountain. It`s exhausting. We made some friends on the wall though, including Chao Yun, who shared his cucumbers with Brianna and Olivia. It was a gorgeous day though, and we had a great time on the wall. After sliding down the mountain from the Great Wall we ate lunch and headed back to Beijing, then went back to the silk market for some more shopping.

On Thursday 4 of us woke up at 4:30am to go to Tiananmen Square and watch the flag ceremony that happens every day at sunrise and sunset. Later that morning we all went back to Tiananmen Square and then to the Forbidden City. I`d been there last year as well, but since the place is so big I was able to walk through a different part and see almost entirely new things...plus I don`t have any of my Beijing pictures from last year...so it`s nice being able to have pictures from Beijing now. That night some of us went to the Olympic plaza and saw the bird`s nest and the water cube. It was cool seeing them all lit up too. We chilled around there for a bit, watching all the Mickey Mouse’s pose for other people, then photobombed a few people while walking back to the metro.

On Friday me and 2 other girls went to the Lama temple, one of the largest Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. It was really neat, we saw a 26m tall statue of a Buddha carved from a single piece of white sandalwood, and were able to watch a big group of monks begin some chanting thing. At one point they were all chanting and the 3 of us were sitting outside the building, then one of them walked out and went to a corner and started texting on his phone! I thought it was a bit strange that he would stop the chanting or praying thing, to go text on his phone! That evening we went back to the pearl market for a few last minute things. I bought some shoes from this one guy, and the girls all around his stall were all telling me that I should be his girlfriend...they said he was very rich and that I would get all the free shoes I wanted, haha, but I passed on the offer.

Saturday was our last day...and there were just 3 of us left...Brianna and Olivia had left for Shanghai on Thursday afternoon, and Celine and Marina had gone home on Friday afternoon, so it was just me and Tiffany and Katey. We had kind of a lazy day...but the rest of the week had been so full, we had been constantly on the go, so it was nice to have a vacation from our vacation for a day, haha. We did have to go back to the pearl market to switch some things around, and then headed to the train station that afternoon. We got our tickets really easily (sometimes they make us go to some specific window to pick up the tickets that we paid for online...and sometimes they don`t speak english, so sometimes it can be a bit of an ordeal picking up the tickets). We had sleeper bed tickets for the ride home...so the trip home was about a million times better than the ride to Beijing. There was a big group of university students on the train with us, and so we made a bunch of new friends. They didn`t really have super good English...but usually between a few of them they could figure out how to say something...that or use a translator. The train ride went by super fast, and before we knew it, we were home! It was a great vacation, there were a million jumping pictures, Chinese opera singers in the forest, love notes, and Rain advertisements! I`m just sad that it was our last vacation!